Funny, You don't LOOK Native American!

My German Grandfather

I had to mail a package at our local post office today and after dropping off my package, I went to exit into the lobby.  A family was sitting by the exit door waiting to apply for passports.  They looked like they were of Indian (from India) descent.  Their youngest child was playing with the door, making it difficult to go through.  The lady in front of me grabbed him, physically moved him to the side and scolded him for being in the way.  I slid out the door behind her.

My Swiss Great-Great Grandfather

As we continued on to the building's exit, we encountered a family entering the building.  They appeared to be on Middle Eastern origin and were talking among themselves in a language other than English.  We both had to wait until they all filed through the door and then out we went.

As the lady (Caucasian, probably in her late 60's or early 70's) held the door for me, she said, "Guess we're going to have to start calling this country the 'United States of Asia.'  They're all sure flocking over here."

I looked over at her and said gently, "Why don't we just call it the 'Land of Opportunity?'"

She chuckled nervously, saying "I guess" and then scurried off to her car.

One of my Dutch ancestors

Of course, by the time I got to my car I had thought of a much better comeback.  I wanted to walk back over to her car and rap on her window to say, "Look, you don't look like a Native American so I think it's safe to say that at some point, your ancestors were immigrants to this country, too.  I know that mine were and I'm grateful for the welcome and opportunities they received.  How about we extend the same courtesies to those who come to our country today?"  

The Dutch town close to where my Dutch side came from

Oh, I know that our country has a checkered history of prejudice against immigrants to our shores.  The Irish and Chinese are examples of that.  Precedence does NOT make prejudice right, however.  We have got to wake up to the fact that America is a multicultural nation and try to work towards treating each other, regardless of ethnicity and beliefs, with respect.  That's what I'm trying to do and it annoys me that the lady at the post office would feel comfortable making a comment to me based solely on the color of my skin, my perceived economic status, and most likely my age and her snap judgement of what she thought my political leanings were.

Pampered, Hershey-Style!

Yesterday daughter Laura came up from Maryland and off we went to the Spa at the Hotel Hershey for a day of pampering.  It was her Mother's Day/birthday present to me and I was so looking forward to it.  I have several friends who treat themselves to a day at this spa occasionally and they always rave about it so now it was my turn.

We arrived bright and early (two hours before our first treatment was scheduled) so that we could enjoy all of the guest facilities while we waited.  One of the spa concierge staff checked us in and then called for a staff member to show us the facility.  Her first stop was at the lockers where we'd be stowing our personal belongings, including clothes.  She WHIZZED through the instructions on how to set the locks and then started off to show us the steam room.

"Um, excuse me!  Could you go over that again?  I didn't quite get how to do that," I said.

She went over it again.  Pick a four-number code and punch it in AFTER you hit the letter "C" and then punch a key symbol.  AARGH!

"Why don't we slip our purses in the lockers now?" Laura said.  "Then we won't have to carry them around for the rest of the tour."

I could feel myself start to panic.  Honestly, my mind went blank.  I couldn't come up with a four-number code for the life of me.  Laura already had her purse put away and her locker locked back up and was staring at me while I gazed at my control panel, hoping for some inspiration.  I couldn't imagine how I was going to remember some random number when I wouldn't have my phone with me that had my trusty password program on it.  That's the only way I keep all those codes and passwords straight.

I finally keyed in my birthday plus an extra digit and whispered it to Laura.  "You'll have to remember it because I never will," I told her.

"Sorry, chemo brain," I told the bewildered tour guide.

After the grand tour, we changed into our swimsuits and put on our spa bathrobes, slipped on our spa sandals and then headed off to the indoor pool.

"Why are you walking like that?" Laura asked me."

"These sandals are killing my feet, especially my broken toe."

"Then go back and ask them for bigger sandals."

"It's not that they're too small.  I have to push my foot way off the end to keep the strap from cutting into that little toe," I explained, shuffling along like someone from Sing Sing.

Laura quickened her pace and I shuffled dutifully behind and found an empty chaise by the pool where I contentedly read my Kindle while she swam laps.

 After a refreshing swim, we sat in the steam room for awhile and then went back to the lockers (yay, I remembered the blasted code) where we took off the swimsuits and put on our underwear, wrapping ourselves in the bathrobes again.  Then we headed upstairs to the "Quiet Room" to lounge until it was time for our massage.  Oh, boy, the Quiet Room was stocked with coffee, tea, hot cocoa, and chocolate muffins.

We joined others lounging about and I settled down with coffee and muffin to do more reading.  Oh, oh....the blasted bathrobe was too skimpy.  It simply wouldn't cover my hips when I crossed my legs.  I struggled with it for awhile and then decided I would shuffle downstairs and ask them for a larger robe.  Off I went and they brought me one that fit great.  A bonus was that it had pockets, which the other one didn't.  Of course, I got lost several times on my way back to the Quiet Room before a helpful staff member turned me in the right direction and I was able to find my way back to Laura.  "How did you rate pockets?" she asked.

Massage time!  Our technicians came to get us and led us to our individual massage rooms.  My technician showed me where to hang my robe, told me to take off my bra and panties and then slip under the covers and she'd return.

"Um, I'm not wearing a bra.  Did you say to take off my underpants?" I asked her.

"You don't have to if you are uncomfortable with that," she answered, "but I prefer to do a massage without them on."

Okey dokey!

When Laura and I met back in the Quiet Room after our massages and were comparing notes, I told her, "The massage was fine but I was a little surprised that she had me remove my underpants."

"WHAT?" said Laura.  "I NEVER remove my underpants.  How do you always end up with the kooks?"

"I don't know," I replied.  "I thought maybe it was the new trend in massages.  How should I know?"

Poor Laura!  We headed off to the Spa's cafe for their brunch.  It was delicious.  As we sat there eating and chatting, our conversation strayed off on the topic of television.

"People have to be careful what they watch.  What you hear will eventually make its way into your conversation," Laura was telling me.  She leaned forward and whispered, "Just the other day, Jason actually said 'C-R-A-P' when he got frustrated at something.  I told him to stop that."

I looked at her.  "What did he say?"

"He said the 'C' word --- 'crap'."

"Crap?  Shit, that's nothing," I replied.

"MOM!" she wailed.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, Laura.  Who are you, Mary Poppins?  I say 'crap' and 'shit' although I usually say 'shit' in German and hope no one speaks enough German to understand it.  Where I draw the line is that I don't say the "F" word or take the Lord's name in vain," I told her.

"Well, that is just wrong," she sputtered.

"I suppose you won't like my new bumper sticker either, then.  It says 'If knitting were exercise, you could bounce a quarter off my ass.' , I told her.

"You put a bumper sticker that says 'ass' on your car," she said, horrified.

"I sure did.  I think it's hysterical.  AND I even drive that car to church," I retorted.

"MOM!" she wailed.

"You know, you are going to be one of those people that gets old and gets dementia and then all of these things that you've bottled up all of these years is going to come boiling over and you're going to have the biggest potty mouth ever," I told her.  "I, on the other hand, will turn into a prim and proper old lady because I haven't held things back."

"I'm not going to get dementia," she countered.  "I do Sudoku."

"Oh, yeah, well, I do Sudoku, too, plus I play Word with Friends," I replied, grinning at her.  "Let's go hit the dessert table."

It was time for our pedicures.  Wow, we got scrubbed with cocoa bean sugar scrub, had our feet and legs painted with chocolate, then got whipped cream-looking stuff rubbed on them, and finally it was time to get our polish applied.  Laura went with a nice conservative red (no surprise there).  Here's what I choose:

We relaxed in the aromatherapy room for an hour after our pedicures and then showered and dressed for the trek home.  Before heading out, we stopped at the hotel shops and I picked up some chocolate-scented body lotion.  When you leave the Spa at Hershey, you smell like one big chocolate bar.  I wanted to be able to recreate the experience.

I gave Laura a hug and whispered in her ear when it was time for her to return home, "Thank you, Sweetie, for a fantastic birthday present.  I had a wonderful time.  Any time you want to go back to the spa, let me know and I'll be glad to join you.  We can take my car next time." (heh, heh, heh)

There Are No Winners!

So many Penn State fans are up-in-arms over the recent sanctions against Penn State in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky scandal and trial.  Just today I heard the lady next to me in Physical Therapy telling her therapist that she planned to cancel her insurance with a well-known insurance company because they were going to pull their sponsorship of Penn State football.

I've thought long and hard about what to say about all of this.  I could talk about an illustrious coaching career wiped out, or hurting football players.  I could focus on shocked and outraged alumni around the world or people who dropped the ball and allowed so many innocents to be harmed.  Instead I just want to say that in all the hoopla it is sometimes too easy to lose focus on the victims themselves.

I know a little bit about this.  Back when I first entered puberty, I experienced one isolated incident of sexual abuse from a trusted relative.  It was isolated, thank goodness, because I didn't listen to him and his pleading to "not let my mother know" and instead found her and told her everything.  From that time until the day he died, I was never alone with him again.  Nowadays, I'm sure it would have been handled quite differently but then, it was handled very much according to my mother's philosophy of "appearances are everything" and "never air your dirty linen in public."

I survived.  It was certainly nothing like Sandusky's victims went through.  Yet, fifty years later, I still find it VERY uncomfortable to be alone with an older man.  Inside me is a twelve-year-old girl praying that someone will come into the room and rescue me.  I think I'm pretty good at masking all of this to those that know me.  I met and married a wonderful man (a "younger man") and we've done just fine in our 32 years of marriage.  But I grieve (and yes, I get angry) that one rotten incident could still be affecting me all these years later, making it so hard for me to trust.  Can you begin to imagine how much worse it must be for the victims in the Sandusky case?

There are no winners in any of this current situation.  I can only hope that one thing will rise to the surface of the debris.  If anyone finds out that sexual abuse is happening to someone, please don't look the other way. Speak up and keep speaking up until someone takes action.

Living "La Vida Loco"

There are days when I really enjoy my life.....my INNER life, that is.  A typical day for me might start with a shower before I head downstairs to blow-dry my hair.  Gah!  Suddenly, I'm launching myself across the room, firing a shot from my blaster at the alien bad guys who are trying to keep me from getting to my spacecraft.  I dive into a somersault, dodging several shots and knocking two pursuers out of commission, spring to my feet,  let loose with several more blasts that take out the rest of my pursuers before I vault over a cart in my path and run up the gangplank into my ship.  And THAT'S before breakfast!

I should probably do dishes before heading off for my physical therapy.  WAIT!  Something doesn't feel right.  Stand back, everyone.  Nobody move until I've had a chance to check out the area.  If I'm not back in five minutes, go out the back window and find a phone to call for NCIS backup.  Tell them to make sure Special Agent Gibbs is sent out here because Field Agent Porterfield is in a potential hostage situation and might need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when rescued.

Trained to lure adversaries into a false sense of superiority by making them think I am just a middle-aged, out-of-shape woman, I easily slip into my awesome ninja skills.  Hiyah!  Take that, vermin!

 But wait!  These aren't ordinary attackers.  They're vampires.  With a flick of my wrists, I draw on my otherworldly powers and the books on my shelves start flying off and hitting them left and right.  They're begging for mercy by the time my shelves are unloaded but it ain't going to happen.  I've dealt with their kind before.

"Never mess with a librarian," I sneer as I stake them through their hearts and turn them to ash.

Time to put on my shades and head over for PT.  I'm one of the few folks who know the truth about that establishment.  It might look like it's full of therapists and gimps but it's all a clever cover.  The whole place is a hotbed of political intrigue.  I park my car and uncoil myself from behind the wheel.  As I stride across the parking lot, I have to remind myself halfway to the door to mask my lethalness behind my bumbling cover.  My therapist starts me off with six minutes on the arm bike.  My steely gaze might look like it is locked on the minutes counting down but I'm watching everything around me.  Nothing is escaping my notice and it will all be in my report to MI-5 when my session is over.  Of course, that might have to wait while I grab a DQ Blizzard on my way back to the Safe House.

You know, sometimes I'm not sure why I bother to watch television.  I have enough going on in my own mind to keep myself entertained for months.  Time to head down the rabbit hole.  Over and Out!

Ooh, Let Me Do That!

I was at Physical Therapy today for my "frozen shoulder" and, as usual, I was paying more attention to what others were doing than to what I was supposed to be doing.  I guess that's a writer for you.  You are always in the process of observing.

As I did my eight minutes of pulley therapy, I glanced over and there was my fellow sufferer, er, patient, Trixie.  Wait a minute!  Why was she just sitting there reading?  Hey, how did she get to do that?  She had some electronic gizmo attached to her shoulder and she was just sitting there in a chair reading her Kindle.  How come she gets the electrical gadgetry?  This is the 21st century.  I want to be hooked up to some techno-gadget that doesn't involve manual labor.

I looked further down the room and there was a lady sitting in another chair with one foot on a device that looked like a pizza plate balanced on a ball.  Um, guys......can I play "Tilt-a-Whirl" with my foot, too?  I have a broken toe.  It might make me feel better and thus more able to exercise my shoulder.

No such luck.  Instead they added "push-ups" to my routine.  Thank goodness they were only the standing up variety where you do them against a wall.  Hmmm, now if I could read a book while I did them, I might be more motivated.  Of course, when you are only doing five of them, I think I'd only have time to read the chapter title.  Sigh!

As I was mulling this over, I noticed a young man moving down the room on a wheeled office chair.  "Gee," I thought, "that therapist is pretty lazy if he can't even get up and walk down the length of the room."

By the time I saw him pass me the third time and saw that he was wearing a leg brace, I realized that he was a fellow PT patient and this was one of his exercises.  Wow!  I wanted to do that.  I'm ALWAYS going back and forth in my computer room on my chair like that.  Surely if I pumped my arms while I did it, that would be exercising my shoulder, wouldn't it?

Humpf!  My physical therapy team just has no imagination.  Try as I might to divert them to other activities, they just keep focusing on this darn shoulder.  Today they told me that the combination of the scar tissue, the frozen shoulder, and the extra-tight pectoral muscles are STILL making my shoulder area extremely tight.  True, but at least I'm not in pain anymore.  Tomorrow I'm going to get some pectoral stretches.  Oh, joy!  I'll bet it won't involve picking marbles off the floor with my toes.

Organic Costs What?

The kids were teasing me last night about my eating habits.  Actually, it was more like teasing about my dear son's eating habits, which closely resemble my own.  They sent me this pic of Jason finishing off some birthday cake while Laura is snuggled next to him eating a salad.    I thought it was funny because yesterday I had actually thrown the rest of the Commander's birthday cake down the garbage disposal and I had actually eaten a salad myself for supper.

I'm REALLY trying to slowly introduce more fruit, greens, and veggies into my diet.  I'm doing it slowly because I don't want to overwhelm my system by doing it too quickly.  After all, this is the digestive tract/body that has been eating nothing but desserts for years for many meals.  However, the Commander had been grousing to our daughter over the weekend about the fact that I never feed him any greens.  Well, that was like waving a red cape at a bull.  If you say things like that around me, I'll take it as a personal challenge.  He's going to have greens coming out of his ears.

Also, a friend of mine had mentioned eating some delicious fruit the other day in a Facebook post and that got me hungry for cherries.  I once did a presentation about the fruits and vegetables that have high concentrations of pesticide on them.  Cherries come in at #10 in the Top Ten Worse Contaminated Fruits and Vegetables.  That's why I try to buy organic when I DO actually buy something from the produce section.

I picked through a pile of bagged organic sweet cherries.  I tried to find the bag with the smallest amount, just in case I took them home and decided I didn't really like them.  I found a bag that was about half full and took it to the scale to weigh it and print off the price label.  Gulp!  The scale said it would cost me $9.06.  What?  Holy cow!  Or should I say, "holy cherries?"  I took the bag back over to the rest of them, opened it up, opened up another bag and dumped half of the berries from MY bag into the other bag.  Resealing it, I weighed it again.  Now it would only cost me $4.96.

Yes, sir......this amount of cherries, which isn't very much, cost me almost $5.  If I keep this up, I might have to take out a personal loan.  I guess I could always hope that I don't like them.  However, since my mom always told me that I had "champagne tastes", I'm not holding out much hope for that happening.

Good thing that we're having an inexpensive meal tonight.  We're having organic spinach chef's salads with onions, diced ham, cut-up green pepper, sliced tomatoes, hard-boiled egg slices, diced pickles, craisins, and sliced almonds.  We each pick our own salad dressing.   Hope you like those greens, my love!

Birthday Boy and Frosting Girl

It's little Spud's first birthday this week and his sister and family celebrated it this past weekend so that his Texas grandpa and grandma could join in the fun, since they'll be away on his actual birthday.  Little Sweet Pea helped decorate two little cakes in preparation for the party.

When it came time to light the candle and sing, they called us up on Skype so that we could sing along and watch the fun.  Here is what happened.

Sweet Pea:  Happy birthday to you......Happy birthday to you........
Spud:   What's going on?  Why is everyone looking at me and singing?

Mommy:  Here, Luke......try some of your birthday cake.  It's very good.

Spud:  I don't like this stuff.  Take it away!
Sweet Pea:  Yummy frosting!

Sweet Pea:  Ummmm, REALLY yummy frosting.  I could eat all of the frosting off of this little cake.

Sweet Pea:  No, Mommy....no helping!  This frosting is all mine.  Hands off!

Spud:  Ooh, Mommy and Daddy, is that the iPad?  Is that Nana and Papa?  Can I talk to them?
Sweet Pea:  Nana is SO right.  Frosting IS the best part of the cake.

Spud:  Hi, Nana and Papa!  I just had a green smoothie drink.  It was much better than that birthday cake.
Sweet Pea:  Hgmpthfth!  Can't talk right now.  Too busy eating frosting.

Spud:  Hey, Daddy....Come see the funny faces that Nana is making on the iPad.
Sweet Pea:  This frosting is SO good that I have to get every bit of it off of my fingers.

Sweet Pea:  (amidst the sounds of everyone saying goodbye via Skype)  Oh, frosting.....sweet, sweet frosting.  Gee, this must be how Pooh feels about honey.

Scattered, Covered, Smothered.....

If you're a Waffle House fan, you probably knew immediately from this post's title that we'd be talking about Waffle House food.  Yup, those are some of the terms you use to describe how you want your hash-browns and what you want on them.  I always order mine smothered and scattered, which means that they add diced onions and they spread out the hash-browns on the grill to fry them up nice and crispy.  Yummy!

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Thursday was the Commander's birthday.  We had decided to wait until our regular "Date Night" on Friday to go out to celebrate.  I had given him his choice of any restaurant he wanted and he surprised me by picking the Waffle House.  It's not exactly prime dining.  It's more of a little hole in the wall truck stop cafe.  No problem, though.  I enjoy their food.

We headed over and pulled into an empty parking lot.  Hmmm!  When we walked in, we were a little startled to discover that we were the only ones in the place besides the cook and two waitresses.  The head waitress (who was training a new girl) called out, "Welcome!  Please have a seat wherever you would like.  There are plenty of choices."

We sat down and perused the menu, which isn't terribly complicated.  When it came time to order, I gave her my order.

"GREAT choice," she enthusiastically said. "And for you, Sir?"

The Commander ordered.

"WONDERFUL!  That's a FANTASTIC choice," she gushed.

Gosh, it was only eggs, hash-browns, and waffles.  Maybe she was demonstrating positive reinforcement to the new waitress.

About every three minutes, she'd walk the three or four strides over to our table and ask us if she could get us anything else.  I asked for more butter.  She brought it with a flourish that would have made a magician proud.

At one point in our dinner, another customer came in.  He had dreadlocks down to his waist.  Whew!  The attention was off of us for a few minutes as they scurried over to set a menu in front of him.  I couldn't help but hear the conversation (these places are TINY).  It seems that he wanted no pork, whatsoever and the grill couldn't have any remnants of pork on it.  Oh, oh....the Commander had just had them cook up a ham and cheese omelet.  No problem!  The cook immediately started cleaning the grill.

The new customer asked, "What kind of meat is a rib-eye?"

The two girls consulted with each other.  "We're not sure but we could call the manager and ask him, " they replied.

The Commander and I raised our eyebrows.  "It's beef," I said under my breath.

They finally figured out it was beef but then he wanted to know what part of the cow the cut came from.  Oy!  Now they were really scrambling.  Before they could get too frantic, he suddenly decided on chicken.  I was happy to note that he didn't ask what kind of meat that was.

That little diversion didn't last long enough before our waitress was once again at our table.  "Can I interest you two in some dessert this fine evening?" she inquired.

Nope, we didn't want dessert; just the check which she brought to us which we then brought back to her after taking the 3 steps to the cash register.

When we walked out and got into the car, both the Commander and I started to laugh.

"Wow," I said, in between giggles," She was certainly outgoing.  I was afraid that they were going to bring out violins to serenade us if we'd stayed much longer."

"She was a little over-the-top," the Commander assessed.

"Well, I think I'd rather have a super-friendly waitress than a rude, surly one," I countered.  "Bless her heart. At least she learned what a rib-eye was today."

What's Next? Sand Dunes?

As I've mentioned in a previous post, it's really been hot in our area.  There have been storms that have passed through but they have dropped little or no rain here.  It's looking more and more like a drought area.  Bushes are wilting, flowers are brown, and lawns are looking terrible.

I hadn't realized just how bad it really was until the other day when I happened to look out of our kitchen window into the backyard.  Gulp!  My gosh, Fresca, the Wonder Dog's little fenced-in part of the yard was beginning to look like a dried-up riverbed.  The ground was actually cracking.

This is how the enclosed part of our yard looks.  The  glimpse you have of the rest of our yard shows that it isn't much better.  There are big patches of dried up lawn.  Our poor lawn guy hasn't bothered to mow for the past two weeks.  There hasn't been any new growth to mow.

I suppose we could get out the sprinklers but we really don't believe in wasting water like that.  In fact, in times of drought, the conventional wisdom is to not bother watering your established lawns because grass will go dormant and then spring back once the rains start back up.  It will happen, but in the meantime, I can't help but think how lovely and lush everything looked in early Spring vs. how it looks now.  Sigh!

On another note, daughter Laura looks a little amazed to see that there might be another photographer in the family.

Yes, the Commander has joined the digital SLR world.  Oh, he's always been a photographer.  In fact, he was developing his own film way back when we first met.  But he hadn't been taking many pictures in recent years.  Now, with his new birthday toy, I think he's going to be getting back into his hobby.  Happy birthday, Sweetie!

Get a Grip!

I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror this morning, applying my makeup, when I happened to glance down and saw a spot of red on my front at around waist level.  My heart gave a jolt and the first thought that popped into my head was "Aaargh!  I'm bleeding.  Something is hemorrhaging!"

Well, after I fumbled for my glasses and stuck them on, I looked closer and discovered that I had accidentally buttoned my bathrobe to my pajama top.  (I'm not the brightest bulb when I first get out of bed. Apparently I'm not even the brightest bulb after I've been up for awhile.)

"Get a grip," I thought.  And just like that, my mind was off and racing on to the topic of getting a grip on difficult things to open.  Are you finding it harder to open jars these days?  Maybe they're no problem for you, but I'm having to resort to a variety of tools to get many jars and cans open as I get older.

One of my favorite tools is this little red number called a "JarKey."  I got mine at Bed, Bath, and Beyond several years ago.  It works like a dream on jars that have sealed lids.  You just hook it under the lid and lift until you hear the vacuum seal "pop."  Then you can easily twist the lid off.  

The yellow "splat" in the upper right of the picture is a rubber gripper.  You'll often get these as promotional freebies at trade shows, etc.  Sometimes that is all I'll need to open a jar if I just need a little more traction than my slippery hands.

This bottle cap opener is one I got from Pampered Chef.  It's been hanging on the side of our refrigerator for several years thanks to a handy magnet on the other side of it.  You can use one end to open bottles.  The other end with the round circle can fit over some 2-liter bottles and then you can twist the tops off (although I'm finding that some of the more recent Coke and Pepsi bottle tops are now too big to fit into this circle).  One of the handiest features is the slotted end by the circle.  You fit that over a bottle tab and lift.  It works great to open pop can tabs and spares your fingernails.  Yay!

The Commander likes this tool (also from Pampered Chef) that has a "V" shape gripper.  You put the jar lid into the "V" until it won't slide into it any further and then you twist.  I can't ever get it to work but it seems to work for him.

If all else fails, I resort to my mom's old tried and true method.  I grab a knife and whack it all around the top edge of the jar lid.  Then I try to open it.  If it still won't open, I repeat the procedure but this time I grab the jar and whack the top edge of the lid on the counter.  That is usually enough to loosen it up so that I can twist it off.  If it is still being stubborn, I go find the Commander and say, "Honey, can you open this for me?"

Well, now that I know I'm not bleeding to death, I think I'll open up a jar of peanut butter, make myself a PBJ sandwich for lunch and keep plugging away at a book I'm trying to finish in time for our Mystery Book Club meeting on Wednesday evening.  Bon appetit!

Well, in MY Day.....

We're in the midst of a heat wave here in south-central PA.  Yesterday it got up to 105 degrees, according to our thermometer.  The local newspaper had a big article about how to survive the heat.  TV stations were featuring news stories about people "coping" with the terrible temperatures.  Me?  I was sitting inside with a sweatshirt on.

"Honey," I told the Commander.  "Maybe you could turn the thermostat up a little.  I'm always freezing in here and it just seems counter-productive to be sitting under quilts or in cold-weather gear when we are in the midst of record temps outside."

There was a little grumbling but he agreed to reset it from 75 degrees to 78 degrees.  Yay!

Today attendance was quite light at church.  The Commander and I were speculating what the reason for this was over our lunch.

"It was probably the heat," he said.  "No one wants to come out when it's this hot."

"I don't get it," I replied.  "What in the world did people do back when most folks didn't have central air conditioning?  When I was growing up in Michigan and Minnesota, most of my friends didn't have air conditioning.  We all survived and thought nothing of going around outside doing our normal activities."

In fact, I STILL do a lot of the things during a heat wave that we did growing up.  I keep the shades drawn to help keep the rooms cooler.  If I get too hot, I go down to the basement (where it is ALWAYS cold) and put my feet up and do nothing.  My mom always told me that I'd get hotter using my muscles to fan myself than I would just sitting quietly.  I don't know if that is true or not.  She might have been using that as an excuse to get my brother and I to go somewhere and give her some peace and quiet.  I drink lots of liquids to stay hydrated.  We run our ceiling fans, which help move the air in the rooms.  If all else fails, we can always go drive to an air-conditioned mall and eat some ice cream.

I was telling a friend about our decision to make the "sacrifice" to up the thermostat to 78 degrees.  To be honest, I was kind of waiting for the praise that I thought might be coming for my conservation efforts.

"Seventy-eight degrees?"  she said.  "Gee, I keep my house set at eighty degrees.  I'm not about to pay the high electrical bills to keep it any cooler."

Wow, and I thought I was tough!  Of course, there's always my 98-year-old mom whose favorite saying in this type of weather is, "Eh, I shocked corn in 100 degree weather.  This is nothing."

Besides, it could be a lot worse.  My brother sent me pics the other day from Michigan where roofers were putting on a new roof at his house.  They are also in the midst of a heat wave and the temps were hovering right around the 100 degree mark.  Can you imagine what it must have been like for the poor guys up on his roof?  He told me that they said it was around 120 degrees up there.  Bless their hearts.  I hope they were rewarded at the end of the day with something cold and icy.

Keep cool!

Eh? Say What?

I was flipping through Flipboard articles today and a headline grabbed my attention.  It mentioned that there is a current trend for hackers to hack hearing aids.  Gulp!  My first thought was, "Who in the world would want to hack into someone's hearing aid to hear what they are saying?"

Luckily I'm a few years away yet from needing a hearing aid (although my family might tell you differently) so I wasn't too worried about it personally.  No one in my family wears a hearing aid, although my dad should have worn one.  He was pretty deaf from working all those years in an auto factory but we just got used to having to repeat ourselves around him.

As I was thinking about the headline, I had to laugh as I remembered one memorable rehearsal with a community band.  I was in the French Horn section and the fellow sitting next to me had a hearing aid battery that had gone bad.  It was whining like crazy.  Without missing a note, the first chair in our section yelled out to the poor fellow, "Fred, your hearing aid is buzzing" and then picked up right where he had left off.

Fred looked over at me and said, "What?"

"Your hearing aid is making noise," I whispered.

"Huh?" Fred said.

"Fix your hearing aid," yelled someone in the trumpet section.

"Dang thing," grumbled Fred, as he pulled it out of his ear and switched it off.

I think if someone was ever convicted of hacking into hearing aids, as punishment they should be made to listen in to the hearing aids of folks in nursing homes.  My mom's roommate, Betty, could give them quite an earful.

When I actually read the article though, it turned out that it was the owners of the hearing aids who were hacking into their own devices and trying to fine-tune them.  Ah, this put a whole new light on the subject.  If you'd like to read the full scoop, here's a link to the BBC article.